I watched some of your videos and i must say the music is really good. The one posted here I was intrigued by, but it could have just been a shorter video since it doesn't really show anything - more like a teaser. Your other videos showing gameplay unfortunately for me do not sell me the game. It does look like a first project - which is fine if it is - but I'm not sure you'll get any buyers at the price you're putting on it. Of course, I could be wrong here and you could do fabulously.

I find that overall there's a huge amount of visual noise on the screen. Lots of things are very bright or very dark, and it makes it pretty difficult to follow what information is supposed to be important or not. I usually try to avoid letting things bloom all the way to white -- it's particularly easy to let that happen if you have a lot of additive materials going on.

I hope you're learning a lot on this project! It certainly looks quite ambitious!

thanks Elyaradine . Ive opted to try light maps instead of realtime shadows, thats why i went for ' as many polys as my gfx can push' just to see how much I can cram into the screen , in the absence of realtime shadows. I know what you mean by too bright and too dark. ill try to adjust.

Hello. im posting my progress of Planet of the invaders. these videos show my efforts to create a spherical planet-like enviroment and getting basic gameplay mechanics working within that spherical enviroment.

I used spherical gravity and a rigid body that always aligns itself according to the surface ( normal) that its on.

Hi . I want to share the latest development with Planet of the Invaders.

this is a small playable level , that will hopefully feature in the final game. should run at 60 fps at 720p . had fun making this mechanic work. even though i had to walk away from my computer a couple times. this is not the finished product, just a little mechanics test.

the aim will be to eventually escape the fire planet by latching onto floating rocks. but for now you can latch onto one floating rock and fly around the scene. controls are displayed on screen with the option to customize them to whatever you want.

all comments and suggestions welcome. This is just a test level , I hope to fix all jerky cameras and animations soon.

Hey @Kulu, I tried out this new build.It took me a while to get the aiming right, mostly because I was generally falling off the rock. Is the rock made of ice or something? Because it feels like as soon as I start walking in one direction I can't stop and then go flying off the end and spin around forever:

When I did attach to a rock as far as I could tell it instantly plummeted and I went spinning much like in the video above. What is meant to happen, and what is the goal?There is also too much glowing stuff to tell what is going on a lot of the time, for me at least.

p.s. People will likely feel better downloading from Dropbox/OneDrive/Google drive, mediafire is dodgy.

the only goal in this version is to attach to the rock. ive done more edits and will post a better version soon. maybe tonight. i will make the walking less slippery and an option to disable bloom. thanks for the feedback. @roguecode

Hi im sharing my latest development on Planet Of The Invaders. Controls are the same . now there are two rocks you can link with. and there's ambient environmental sound effects. please remember that the character has momentum behind his actions , so dont always hold down forward or back , otherwise you'll fall off the small ground that you are on. please make sure you know where you will land before detaching from the rock you are linked to.

at the end of this levels development , the goal will be to reach a specific piece of ground , where there will be a spaceship to escape this fire planet.

p.s I also get frustrated when I fall off the ground , or when I detach and end up missing the ground im trying to reach.

p.s I also get frustrated when I fall off the ground , or when I detach and end up missing the ground im trying to reach.

If you have to warn your players to play in a specific way, or else it's frustrating, and you yourself say it is frustrating to achieve the in game goals, then perhaps consider revising your mechanics/physics so it's easier to do. Maybe capping the maximum momentum or allowing some air control.

Either that, or make it very clear in game what they need to do, and give them a safe space to practise the mechanics.

its not impossible to succeed in this level, it just takes patience. ill probably add a swinging mechanism when the player is attached to the rock.

But the aim of this level is to be ' not straight foward' . how this ties to the story is that the character is exiled to this place by his enemies . so its not really sapposed to be easy.

thanks for the feedback. I hope you give this new build a run. its actually more forgiving than the previos versions. but this is just 1 level amongst a few other planned levels . theres going to be space ship battles , third person shooting and basic 3rd person missions. so its not the whole game that ive shown so far. im just really digging working on this level , its one of the things i like about space based science fiction. but that for the advice.

This is the opening and level 1 of Planet of the Invaders. for your consideration and crits.

please use a controller for this version, this is very much still a work in progress , and mouse options should come later. but it works pretty sweet with analogue sticks for movement and looking around and R1 button to shoot. I was trying to mimic a typical console shooter control system.

Basically Im asking for any feedback , to do with any play experiences .

@Kulu Hi, I downloaded and fired it up. Looks interesting. I got passed the intro scene (please allow for it to be bypassed where user can opt out if possible, just makes it easier/quicker to test too).

The game did not seem to recognise my controller so I could not really play it? I restarted the game a few times.

My rig: Win10, GTX1070 and a Logitech F310 controller.

Edit:

Ah, I saw CTRL-SHIFT-F9 (allows for remapping) via the forum, cool.

Once configured for keyboard (not sure how all those keys will map to a gamepad?) I managed to swap between what seems to be squad members inside a spaceship/station and 2 reptilians riding a hover bike in space?

Since there are more than 5 keys I recommend a popup indicating all keys currently configured at a glance when the game starts.

If I may suggest you add some zoom in/out feature when in space riding the hover bike?

I think your skymap is a bit too noisy/busy with stars that are too colourful and large. Maybe tone it down so the player focus is more on your ship models etc?

Wats happenin fellow game lovers. Ive made Caged Photon available for free on itch.io . It was Caged Photons eventual fate i guess. Please feel free to comment on whatever issues you find with this build. also dont forget to download the fix files , as described on the itch.io pages. Thanks for all the input . Happy Gaming!

Hi fellow gamers. I just want to share and get feedback on this mini game , that im thinking of adding to Planet of the Invaders. the controls are simple:arrow keys to move around, "a" key to move cursor up, "z" to move cursor down. once you make contact with the a block you will automatically be attached to it. press "a" key to detach from block. the goal is to rearrange the blocks in the correct order. These kind of puzzles are tough to solve for me, but you might find it easy. I still havent beaten this level yet.